What are the roles for health professionals in addressing the rising threat of the use of nuclear weapons? With particular reference to the activities of the Medical Association for the Prevention of War 1951-1963.

Abstract

The question of nuclear weapons is as pressing now as it ever has been in my lifetime. Recent Lancet correspondence argues that ‘the ongoing conflict in Ukraine [. . .] has made clear that nuclear war is closer than ever’ (Bisceglia and Fateh-Moghadam 2022, 159). For similar reasons, the Bulletin’s doomsday clock is 90 seconds to midnight, the closest it has even been set (Spinazze 2023). This is in spite of the 2021 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons being ratified by the UN, in which participating nations agree to ‘not develop, test, produce, acquire, possess, stockpile, use or threaten to use nuclear weapons’ (UN 2021). There is a long history of nuclear weapons being framed as a public health issue. Like climate change, many see resistance as a constituent part of medical duty and believe that ‘the medical community must prevent what we cannot cure’ (Helfand, Junkkari, and Onazi 2014, 739). Giorgio Cosmacini, a historian of medicine, argued in reference to the two world wars the shortcomings of a neutral medical community: